Oregon Injury Lawyer Blog

February 22, 2013

Oregon Product Liability Issues Raised in Tainted Peanut Case

The Oregonian noted this afternoon that the FBI is asking people across the United States to contact it regarding illnesses traceable to tainted peanuts.

The case began in 2009 with an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration which found a Georgia plant run by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) to be “filthy, with dead rodents and droppings, and that the company sold tainted products and sometimes had them retested after a positive salmonella test,” the newspaper reports. The FBI statement comes one day after four top executives from Peanut Corporation of America were indicted on federal conspiracy, wire fraud and obstruction of justice charges, a legal move that goes far beyond what is normal in federal cases of this type.

The FBI statement (see link below) asks victims of the tainted food to fill out a confidential form so that they can be kept notified of developments in the case. The newspaper notes that in a highly unusual move, “the ad does not limit itself to patients, either. It asks anyone affected by the outbreak – which could include the hundreds of companies that recalled products – to respond.” According to the newspaper’s report, 700 people, including 15 here in Oregon, became ill after eating tainted products traced to the factory. Among those sickened, nine deaths were also reported.

February 19, 2013

National Program Presses for More Bike Lanes

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A recent article at Atlantic Cities, a subsection of The Atlantic magazine’s website, looks at efforts to make American cities more bike-friendly. Its focus is the Green Lane Project (GLP), which is organized by the national advocacy group Bikes Belong.

As the magazine explains, the GLP’s goal is to help cities “adopt high-quality bicycle infrastructure – bike lanes where people can ride with at least some protection from car traffic in the form of bollards, parked cars, raised pavement or other separation.” The project is focusing its efforts on Austin, San Francisco, Chicago, Memphis, Washington D.C. … and Portland. “The GLP hopes to educate municipal planners and engineers, increase the visibility of such lanes, and make them part of a mainstream approach to designing urban streets.”

As we know here in Portland – and as a photo from San Francisco’s Market Street accompanying the article illustrates – green-painted bike lanes are not always separated from motorized traffic. The broader point of the project, however, is to rethink city streets in ways that make it less intimidating for casual cyclists to share the road with cars and trucks. Activists hope that, in turn, will make urban biking more mainstream and less about “messengers and Lycra-clad road riders.”

February 13, 2013

Helicopter Crash Raises Oregon Wrongful Death, Industrial Accident Issues

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Investigations of a 2008 helicopter crash that killed nine and injured four in Northern California have resulted in criminal charges for two Oregon men and also raise both Oregon wrongful death and, potentially, industrial accident issues. The details of the tragedy were outlined last week by The Oregonian.

All of the crash victims were involved in fighting wildfires in California at the time of the incident. All but one were Oregonians, as are the two men who, the paper reports, now face fraud charges in relation to the crash. The criminal complaint “accuses the two men of falsifying the weight and takeoff power of the helicopter that crashed and other helicopters that were part of a ‘call-when-needed’ contract worth up to $20 million” The Oregonian reports. Both men have been suspended by the Grant’s Pass company that employed them, owned the helicopter and had contracted it to the US Forest Service for firefighting duty in California.

The criminal charges carry potential 20-year sentences, but they also raise civil liability issues that ought to be considered. If the allegations against the defendants are true their actions could also warrant the filing of wrongful death charges by loved ones of those killed in the crash. Ordinarily, the statute of limitations for Oregon wrongful death claims is three years. The law does, however, allow for exceptions if the negligent act was not discovered within that time frame, a situation that may apply in this case since criminal charges have only just been filed. Whether such a suit would be directed at the men currently facing criminal charges, at their employer (the helicopter’s owner) or both is an issue requiring further legal analysis.

February 6, 2013

Tri-Met Work Agreement is a Victory for Passenger Safety

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Last month I wrote about the growing controversy over work rules for Tri-Met bus and train drivers and concerns that public safety could be affected when drivers log excessively long shifts. In January, the union representing Tri-Met’s drivers rejected proposed work rules saying that, as written, they posed a threat to both drivers themselves and the public at large.

According to a report in yesterday’s Oregonian the union and Tri-Met now “have officially signed an agreement requiring bus drivers to take off a minimum number of hours between shifts.” The paper reports that both Tri-Met and the union “promised that the agreement will fix a system that has allowed several drivers to pad their paychecks by working as many as 22 hours in a 24-hour period.” (the link to the Oregonian, below, contains, in turn, a link to the full text of the work agreement)

Until now, as The Oregonian notes, loopholes in the federal government’s system of oversight for drivers and passenger haulers mean that federal rules preventing excessive shifts or hours do not apply to Tri-Met’s bus operators but do apply to the transit system’s train operators. The result was a system that has long had real potential to endanger the drivers themselves, their passengers and cyclists and pedestrians who share the road with Tri-Met’s buses and trains, as a number of tragic Oregon traffic accidents have demonstrated in recent years.

January 31, 2013

Freeway Pileup Highlights Winter Driving Dangers

by Matthew D. Kaplan

The Associated Press is reporting that two people died and 20 people have been injured in a multi-car and truck accident on Interstate-75 near Detroit. The fatal road accident involved “more than two dozen vehicles including tractor-trailers,” according to the news agency, and highlights the need for caution during this winter driving season.

Though this particular accident took place half a continent away from Oregon, the circumstances are some that we are all too familiar with here in the Pacific Northwest. Be it on the congested roads around Portland or the notoriously dangerous Cabbage Hill segment of Interstate-84 in the east of the state, Oregon semi-truck accidents are a serious problem on the roads of our state and region.

In 2010 alone, the last year for which Oregon Department of Transportation data is available, there were 649 Oregon truck crashes on our roads involving semi-trailers, resulting in nearly 250 injuries and 25 deaths. As these figures indicate, the operation of large trucks calls for special care and caution on the part of drivers. Of course, semi-truck operators are not alone in this responsibility. The accident figures cited here are only a fraction of the total number of Oregon truck crashes that take place every year.

January 27, 2013

Important Oregon Product Safety Information

by Matthew D. Kaplan

An important Oregon consumer safety announcement from the federal government has been passed along by The Oregonian. The newspaper reports that the Food and Drug Administration has ordered the recall of seven different varieties of Annie’s frozen pizza because some of the meals may be “studded with metal fragments.”

The newspaper reports that a statement issued by the manufacturer, Annie’s Inc of Berkeley, California, “said a mesh screen at a flour mill broke causing tiny metal pieces to tumble into the flour and contaminate pizza dough.” According to The Oregonian the recalled frozen pizzas have been distributed nationwide, so it is only prudent to assume that some may have made their way here to Oregon.

A separate statement released by the FDA noted that the recall is precautionary in nature. Until now, no metal fragments have been discovered in the affected products. The FDA news release (see link below) offers a complete list of the products being recalled, along with their UPC numbers, and also provides contact information for the hotline set up by the company to deal with consumer questions and concerns.

January 21, 2013

Oregon Car Crash Kills One

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A three-vehicle Polk County, Oregon car accident over the weekend left one man dead and five people hospitalized, according to a report in The Oregonian.

The Oregon auto accident took place in the town of Dallas, about 60 miles southwest of Portland. The newspaper, quoting the Oregon State Police, reports that the sequence of events began Saturday evening when a van driven by a man from Woodburn “was heading west when it traveled across the center line and collided” with a vehicle headed in the opposite direction on State Route 22.

The driver of the eastbound vehicle was a 69-year-old Silverton man. He was pronounced dead by paramedics responding to the accident. Two other people in the car were taken to a Salem hospital with what The Oregonian describes as “critical” injuries. The driver of the van was not seriously injured in the initial crash, but was struck by a third vehicle, a westbound pickup truck, when he stopped to assess the initial accident. He was taken to the same Salem hospital as the victims in the car and is reported to be suffering from “serious injuries.” The two people in the third vehicle were treated in McMinnville for minor injuries.

January 17, 2013

Portland Bus Safety At Issue as Tri-Met Drivers Reject Longer Workday

by Matthew D. Kaplan

The union representing Tri-Met workers has rejected proposed work rules that would have allowed bus and other transit drivers in the Portland area to work 14-hour shifts, according to a report published in The Oregonian.

The paper reports that “the union representing operators, mechanics and support staff quickly rejected the plan on Monday, saying it didn’t go far enough to address the growing problem with exhaustion.” The paper quotes a union leader saying “No human being, especially one transporting passengers through city traffic, can safely operate a bus over a 14-hour workday, day-after-day.”

The proposed work rules would “limit” drivers to a 14-hour workday and require at 10 hours off between shifts. According to the paper the proposed work plan would have applied to drivers of both buses and light-rail trains. The paper notes that “the current policy, based on service days, makes it easy for a driver to finagle extra overtime by working marathon runs.”

January 12, 2013

Cabbage Hill Crash: New Details Emerge

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Following up on a story I first blogged about last week, The Oregonian reports that federal authorities have ordered the bus company involved in the New Year’s weekend crash on Deadman’s Pass section of Cabbage Hill, east of Pendleton, to cease operations in the United States. According to the newspaper, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced on this week that the Canadian company operating the tour bus had let the driver work “well beyond” the 70 hours per 8 days maximum allowed by US law.

As the paper notes, “nine people died in late December when (the) bus… ran through a guardrail and rolled down a steep embankment along Interstate 84.” A further 39 people were injured in the fatal Oregon bus crash, an accident which, as I noted last week, raises significant wrongful death questions.

The action taken by federal officials raises several issues. Obviously, rules designed to prevent driver fatigue need to be rigorously enforced in the interest of public safety, but enforcing those rules on a foreign company is likely to involve significant technical and logistical issues. It is especially worrisome that, as The Oregonian reports, the order requiring the company to cease US operations “specifically cites the company for failure to test the driver for drugs and alcohol prior to the crash, failure to properly maintain driver qualification requirements and failure to operate a motor vehicle in a safe manner.” To be fair, it is difficult to imagine that Canadian national or British Columbian provincial law (the bus company is headquartered in Vancouver, B.C.) does not also address most if not all of these issues – but assuming that it does, one has to wonder why two governments as closely tied as ours and Canada’s are not able to exchange information that might go a long way toward protecting public safety.

January 4, 2013

Oregon Wrongful Death Questions in Wake of Bus Crash

by Matthew D. Kaplan

By now most Oregonians will have read or heard about the terrible New Year’s weekend bus crash on Deadman’s Pass in the east of the state. According to The Oregonian, nine people died and dozens were injured last weekend when a tour bus “skidded off Interstate 84 east of Pendleton and rolled 200 feet down a mountain canyon.”

The newspaper quotes an Oregon state police spokesman saying that 39 injured people were taken to hospitals across three states. A total of 49 people were aboard the bus at the time of the accident, meaning that only one person avoided injury in this Oregon bus crash. The newspaper reports that the passengers ranged in age from seven to 73 years old. Most were Americans and Canadians of Korean ancestry.

The bus was reportedly returning from an excursion to Las Vegas at the time of the accident, which occurred on a dangerous stretch of the Cabbage Hill section of I-84. “Oregon state police investigators will look into the possibility that (the) bus driver… was driving too fast for the slippery conditions on the notorious mountain pass,” according to the paper. “Investigators will also determine if driver fatigue was a factor,” The Oregonian reports.